


The Northern Lights Are Far and Bright

by Griftings



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, F/F, F/M, Slow Burn, Time Travel, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:43:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griftings/pseuds/Griftings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Above her the Sphinx snarls, then throws back its head and roars again, but she can barely hear it through the pounding in her head, the sound muffled beneath the beating of her heart, loud, so loud, in her ears, frantic like a drum and she times each beat to the pulse of blood that drips between her fingers. Her vision clouds, dances, grows hazy as she hits the ground, her head dizzy, the air shifting about her, time tastes heavy in her mouth, the temporal flux that surrounds them once again making itself known, and fuck, she's going to age again and die as an old woman, this is not at all how she wanted to go--</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Vex'ahlia drifts into the darkness, and without an anchor she never lands.</i></p><p> </p><p>Or, the one where the battle with the Sphinx goes poorly, and Vex is thrown, injured and bleeding out, into the past. After being saved by someone unexpected and brought to Whitestone, she must make the choice to either let fate take its course as she knows it, or to try and change the events of the past despite not knowing how it may affect the future; a choice that's complicated more than is fair by a young human lordling who is far too familiar and yet a complete stranger all at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i know, i _know_ , but grif you havent updated the woods in over a month why are you doing this to yourself
> 
> because after episode 49 i had this idea and goddammit it has bugged me ever since, i have tried to sit down and force myself to work on the next chapters of both my other fics and i can't, i just CAN'T i had to get this out i am sorry OTL but hey fuck it i write for fun not profit so the way i figure if i've got to force myself to write something that i'm just not feeling at the mo then i'm not having fun. that being said, i AM working on the next chapter of the woods and hopefully i should have that up in the next week. my bad ya'll.
> 
> sort of played around with what i think kimaljiori would be capable of, but, eh. creative liberties and the like.

Vex almost thinks it's over, when Grog finally comes to his senses and shouts out the last letters.

It's what they need, it's _all_ they need, the only requirement is to put them in the correct order, and there are brighter minds than hers ready and willing to step up to that plate. Already she can see Percy mouthing possibilities to himself, just barely able to make out the shape of his lips as they move quickly over the distance and battle between them, the roar of the cyclone drowning out his calls but she can read them, _Maljikiori_ , _Malorikaiji_ , nonsense to her but she trusts his clever brain far more than she trusts her own right now, still aching from the sting of the spiders.

She's moving towards the cyclone, immovable rod clutched in one hand and the other already rising towards the broom on her back, bow forgotten in the tumult, she does not have _time_ to attack, not while Scanlan has disappeared into a great fuck-all twister of death. Her clothes, her skin, her hair are all still damp and freezing from her dip into what she can only assume is the elemental plane of water, a shiver clattering her teeth and causing her hands to shake, it's probably a good thing she's not attempting to shoot right now, more like than not she'd end up hitting one of her friends instead of the Sphinx, like Pike, oh _Pike_ \--

She cannot imagine what will await her on the inside of the twister, but she has seen death, and she does not fear it. What she does fear, more than anything, is loss. She has not truly lost any of her family yet, and she will not now.

Her brother seems to have had the same idea, attention focused on noosing Grog and leaping towards the twister with the same single-minded focus he's had since the last Sphinx's roar, unresponsive to the clatter and cacophony around him. Across the room, Vex's gaze lifts and meets Percy's, and she knows that they are sharing a similar thought; she trusts Grog implicitly, but she does not trust the strength of his neck to hold the weight of both Vax and Scanlan. He's a fine tether, but there are lives on the line, and she has an immovable rod, which is far better, and a way to fly.

As her fingers clutch around the shaft of the broom and lift it from its secured place on her back, the Sphinx turns and looks at her.

She thinks it's curious, how nearly-human it looks, how nearly-Elven, features elongated and distorted, cat-like in the eyes and ears, the points of its teeth when it opens its mouth and snarls at her.

It happened so fast, she will think later, when she has time to think of such things. Everything just happens so very fast.

It pounces towards her, claws slashing out, raking across her stomach in the same place it'd hit her before, tearing open skin that's already been abused, catching on the chain of the Raven's Slumber on the upswing and breaking it, the dark gem clattering across the floor. Beneath her armor she can feel her underclothes grow warm and wet, blood soaking through, something inside of her loosening and shifting, and she's cleaned fish, dressed kills, helped Grog butcher meat; she knows that she's been gutted, that her ripped armor is the only thing keeping her innards from becoming outards.

She drops the rod. She's shaking so much she hardly notices when she drops the broom, lifting a hand to her stomach, trying to push that spilling lifeblood back into her body. Vax doesn't react, eyes focused entirely on the cyclone in front of him, and when she tries to call out his name copper rises in her throat, coating the back of her tongue and leaking between her teeth, and he jumps into the wind and vanishes from her sight.

Percy is still looking at her, she realizes. His mouth has stopped moving, those brilliant lips connected to that brilliant mind no longer trying to shape the letters into a name. Instead he is staring at her, horrified, eyes wide enough behind his glasses that she can tell even from this distance as she drops to her knees, still holding her bowels in with a palm, stained red.

Oh gods, she thinks as she falls. Oh gods, he is going to watch me die again.

Above her the Sphinx snarls, then throws back its head and roars again, but she can barely hear it through the pounding in her head, the sound muffled beneath the beating of her heart, loud, so loud, in her ears, frantic like a drum and she times each beat to the pulse of blood that drips between her fingers. Her vision clouds, dances, grows hazy as she hits the ground, her head dizzy, the air shifting about her, time tastes heavy in her mouth, the temporal flux that surrounds them once again making itself known, and fuck, she's going to age again and die as an old woman, this is not at all how she wanted to go--

Vex'ahlia drifts into the darkness, and without an anchor she never lands.

\------------------

Or, rather, she does eventually, but it takes quite a while.

When she wakes, the sun is beating harshly upon her, burning her eyes even through the closed lids. It takes nearly five seconds of questioning consciousness for the pain and agony to hit her, but when it does she seizes, muscles tensing against the burning in her guts, the sharp pain of it, and she breathes heavily, gasping for air, as she lifts her head to look down at herself.

A crow is perched on her thigh, pecking into her midriff, through a hole that's been worn through her armor, and its beak comes back red and glistening, holding something, and oh gods, oh _gods_ , it's eating her, it's fucking eating her, how _fucking appropriate_.

She screams and jerks, arm lifting to slap at the bird, and it croaks and flaps away, wings working furiously to take to the air, still clutching its prize, and she drops her head back down, pressing against her stomach with one hand and her eyes with the other and she weeps miserably, pain searing through her body, burning up her veins. She cries, for at the moment she has little inclination to do anything else, overwhelmed by the suffering of it, mind turned completely inwards.

She has been injured, and she has even died, but most of-- most of the pain she's endured has been magical, attacking her mind or stopping her heart outright, and she's never endured _this_ , this helpless, hopeless torture, her body betraying her as her heart works frantically to keep her alive, pushing more and more blood out with each passing second.

It takes nearly a minute for her to calm her tears and her lungs still give great, heaving hiccups as she forces herself into a sitting position, gasping for air and gritting her teeth at the same time as she reaches into one of her side pouches and feels for the glass bottle of a potion.

One of them has broken; her fingers come away wet, and she believes she may have even pricked a finger on a piece of shattered glass but the wound seems to have been healed instantly, coated as it is in the sharp, medicinal-smelling liquid. She draws one out with a shaking hand, uncorks it with her teeth, the muscles of her throat and chest burning, she's losing so much blood, too much blood, how long has she been unconscious, _where is her brother_ , but she swallows it, choking briefly, a spasm as it goes down directing some into her esophagus, wracking coughs forcing pressure onto her bowels, and she can feel them, warm and wet and slimy against her fingers, oh gods _oh gods_ , but it is soothed almost instantly, the magical properties of the potion doing their job.

It's not a complete fix, but some of the pain has faded, clearing her mind enough to think without simple consciousness threatening to kill her. She drinks another potion, managing to keep most of it down, and what dribbles from her lips down her neck cools the heated, sweaty skin there. Her third and final intact potion is uncorked, and she drinks a mouthful, her tongue and throat almost completely numb from the liquid, before, as carefully as she can with trembling fingers, she lifts the hand that's holding her intestines inside and pours the rest of the potion directly onto her stomach.

It's an immediate, freezing sting, that bites at her nerves and she throws her head back and screams again, tears once more springing to her eyes and falling over her cheeks, blood and bile rising up her throat and burning her palate but she forces it back down, sniffling, determined not to vomit up the potion before it can take full effect.

It is an ugly process, and it takes a little less than a minute, though to Vex it feels like a lifetime.

When she's regained as much control over herself as she can, still hiccuping out little instinctual sobs, she glances down and cautiously lifts her hand again.

Her stomach has knitted over, sort of, the gashes from the claws that had ripped her open having mostly closed, though the skin is raw, red, angry, new and thin like a bruise, a burn, the potion not nearly as strong as healing magic and probably only this effective because of the sheer quantity that she'd consumed. Her already-fuzzy mind feels even hazier now, and she laughs, startled and delirious, because it'd be just _hilarious_ if she passed out from a potion overdose and that crow made a feast of her because of it.

Finally, some of her wits returned to her, still shivering from shock but a clarity in her vision because of it, her eyes taking in information in sharp definition that her brain can barely comprehend, Vex lifts her trembling head once more and looks around.

Vox Machina is nowhere to be seen.

She's in a field, grassland, a flat plain that stretches out into the horizon, miles ahead of her only just broken by a mountain range, far in the distance, too far to make in less than a day and on her own in this state.

Where is she? Where the _fuck_ is she? This is so far from the Sphinx's lair, so far from the Frostweald, the sun shining down from high in the sky, mid-afternoon where she could have sworn they'd gone into the mountain tunnel in the morning. The fields outside of the refugee camp, she wonders? Westruun had not been too terribly far a distance away, and she can see no city walls in the distance, but it had been a fairly wide grassland they'd traversed, and her head _aches_ , enough that she knows she's disoriented, that perhaps at the moment she's not the best at judging distance.

That _fucking_ Sphinx ripped her open and then teleported her dozens of miles away.

"I'm gonna kill him," she growls to herself, slowly, painfully redoing the buckles of her armor that are still intact enough to fasten. "I'm gonna figure out his name, and then I'm gonna shoot him in the face and kill him."

When she lifts herself to her feet she nearly falls back down, knees shaking and weak, and she stands there for a long minute, trying to regain her balance and weeping quietly, too distracted by her pain to feel ashamed of the tears. Her stomach feels upset, hot and tight, roiling beneath her skin and screaming for the injustice that's been inflicted upon it, and the first few steps are miserable, agonizing things that she has to stop for breath far too frequently to make.

She will never admit it, not to herself, not to Vax, not even to Trinket, but after the tenth stumbling step, Vex'ahlia almost gives up.

The skin that's regrown from the potion is stretched thin enough that every movement threatens to tear it, burning hot like daggers being stabbed into her stomach, the position of her bowels shifted from where nature intended them to stay and each step, each lift and fall of each booted foot, is nearly blinding for the pain that rockets up her torso. Less than fifteen feet she's moved, but each inch is a struggle, a fight against the urge to just lay back down and cry.

The mountains are not an impossible distance away, logically, but she's unsure in this moment if she can cross it, if she can reach them, and even if she can she's not sure if she can escape the dangers of the Frostweald fast enough to find the cave of the Sphinx to regroup with her friends. Assuming that they're even still alive.

The decision is made by the cawing of the crow.

She looks up and sees it circling above her, wings flapping against the warm air lazily, not that high up. It's not even attempting caution, not even slightly concerned that she will strike at it in retaliation for its earlier snack, and that's--that's what seals the deal, pure and unadulterated _spite_ forcing her legs to move once more, chin held high and jaw gritted until her teeth ache.

The crow follows her, dipping down every few feet as if to check on her process, to see if she's going to keel over so it can return to its meal.

"Not today," she tells it with a shaking voice, pulling the words from her throat through sheer determination, her knees trembling under the weight of her. "Maybe one day, but not today."

Uneffected, or perhaps unconvinced, the crow pinwheels overhead, tracking each of her pained, jerky steps as she walks towards the mountains, hands still clutching her stomach without her say-so, as if apart from her conscious mind they are aware of the weakness in her more than she is.

She tries desperately not to think of her brother, lost in the cyclone. She tries desperately not to think of her bear, trapped in a crystal necklace on the floor. She tries desperately not to think of Pike, run through the middle with that damned sword, of Grog, the agony in his face at the injury he'd inflicted upon her, of Scanlan, vanished into the whirling wind, of Keyleth, who'd been relying on her to catch the rod and anchor it, of Percy, his eyes wide with fear as he'd watched her fall _again_.

The thought of them, of _not_ thinking of them, is what carries her on through the misery that courses through her ruined body, the drive that pushes her to make each shivering step. She walks, alone, for five minutes, ten, thirty, an hour, exhausted, mindless, focused entirely on putting one foot in front of the other, on the mountains in the distance that never seem to grow closer.

If the black dragon found her now, she'd be less than useless, an injured rabbit laying prone for a hawk to swoop down and take as it pleases, but she's so numb to the fear now, cold and hot at the same time, blood loss making her dizzy and sweat but fever searing her muscles beneath her skin. Oh, god, what if her wounds are infected? What if she's trapped that infection inside of her? She would never make it to the mountains, much less the Sphinx's cave.

Vex walks, and she walks, and she walks, until she loses count of the steps, of the time that passes, the sun cresting over her head, wheeling above her in the sky like one of Tiberius's fireballs, shooting across the expanse of blue until it explodes in the shower of sparks and smokes that Percy's gun looses, the sound of it pounding in her ears, or maybe that's her blood, thrumming through her veins and crawling up her throat until it seeps through her teeth, and she stops, swaying, delirious with the heat and pain of her stomach, of her mind, of her heart, and her eyes roll backwards, and she cannot, she's already decided she won't give up, she cannot fall, she _cannot_.

Pounding, gunshots, blood, heartbeats, hoofbeats, the rattle of wood, voices above her.

Vex blacks out.

\------------------

Voices above her.

"...poor thing..."

Voices above her. Familiar, sort of, the way you dream of a face and then pass someone in a crowd who looks similar.

"...blood loss, might not make..."

Voices above her. One of them is, anyway. The other not so much, though the accent she recognizes from somewhere, scratching through the annals of her mind like a mouse in a wall.

"...stone? The Keeper could..."

Voices above her. The familiar one is deep, throaty, feminine? Zahra? Oh, please, she thinks dimly, as much as someone who's barely conscious _can_ think, let it be Zahra. But no, the tibre is off, the pitch different.

"...a risk. Do we have any..."

Voices above her. The stranger speaks softly, gently, as if soothing a wild beast. There is a hand in her hair and another against her stomach, palpating it with the barest amount of pressure but it still makes her cry out weakly, a shivering moan that ends in weeping, tears dripping from her eyes onto her numb, numb cheeks.

"...awake! Don't move, darling..."

Voices above her. She wants her mother. She wants her bear. She wants her brother. She wants Vax's hands touching her, holding her, grounding her, she is so tired, she is so hurt, if something doesn't stop her and keep her here then she fears she will float off into the dark nothingness again.

"...her up, hurry, into the..."

Voices above her. She _is_ afraid, she _does_ fear it, that cold clutch of death, she thought she'd moved on and past that but oh gods not now, not while she still has a task to complete, not while her revenge hasn't yet been exacted, not while Thordak still breathes, not here, not without her brother beside her, not without him, not while she is so far away--

"Vax," she whispers, her voice cracking halfway through as she starts to sob again, shameless, naked without her pride, here on the edge of the abyss. "Vax."

The voices stop. Start again. Voices above her.

"..fucking hell. Give me the- lift her head..."

A hand at the base of her neck, forcing her head upwards, fingers prying open her mouth but not unkindly, and when something touches her lips she smells the tang of a potion and cries harder and turns away from it. No, not more, she can't take more, her stomach is too full, too empty, too torn open, it will leak through her, don't waste it, it's too precious, _Vax..._

"Darling, darling," the strange voice soothes above her, thumbs working the muscles of her throat to force her to swallow, and that familiar voice that she can't place sighs, "What a mess. Honestly, my Lady, you and your strays..."

Vax does not come, and he does not touch her, and he does not hold her, and he does not ground her, and with nothing to stop her and keep her here Vex once again floats off into the dark nothingness.

\------------------

Despite best efforts of fate and fortune, Vex'ahlia doesn't die a second time. At least, not then.

Instead she wakes, feverish and hot but aware of herself enough to know that she is so, and her eyes open and blink blearily to see something above her head.

A roof. Yes? No. Perhaps not. It's moving slightly with a creak, though that could very well be caused by the exhaustion that clings to her, by the loss of blood that makes her feel empty and weak, drained of energy such that when she closes her eyes she doesn't open them again for a while, drifting hazily in the realm between sleeping and waking for time untold before a thread of cautiousness trundles through her mind lazily, too tired to startle.

"Where--?" she asks, not able to complete the question for the dryness in her mouth, the rasp that tickles at her throat when she tries to speak, and she coughs, but coughing is painful.

"Hush, now, my Lady," a voice murmurs to the side, and if she had the wherewithal to jump in surprise she would, but all she can manage is a slow blink and a heavy sigh. The voice is familiar in its strangeness; the same voice of the woman she didn't recognize while fading in and out of consciousness. "I'm going to give you something, please don't fight it."

Saying that makes her want to struggle purely out of spite but she lacks the will to make any sort of motion, though when something is once again placed against her lips she whines softly and attempts to dodge out of the way. The cool liquid that touches her tongue is just water, though, and once she realizes this she stills immediately, drinking greedily as it's poured slowly, painstakingly, into her mouth.

Vex sighs again at the end of it, and when she opens her eyes once more they're able to focus a bit better. The roof above her head is a roof, certainly, but the roof of a carriage, which explains the swaying and the rocking, the creaking of wood, and now that she's listening she can hear the sound of hooves tromping across dirt.

"Where am I?" she tries again, managing the words in their entirety now, though her throat still aches and the taste of blood is still heavy at the back of it. It's been a very, very long time since she's been injured this badly and not had healing magic cast on her almost immediately, been longer still since she's had to rely completely on her own body and the meager health properties of potions to soothe her wounds. She's been spoiled by Pike, she realizes; she's used to feeling pain, but _enduring_ it is another matter.

She gains the strength to turn her head towards the speaker soon after, breathing heavily from the effort, and blinks in surprise at what she sees.

A woman, perhaps a few years younger than herself, maybe around Percy or Keyleth's age, with long, deep brown hair that's pulled up into a loose bun. Her face is sharp, angular, with little roundness or excess fat, but the natural upturn of her lips and the wideness of her blue eyes, enhanced by the light application of kohl that lines the lower lids of them, lend to a more gentle expression, and when Vex meets her eyes she smiles slightly.

"You're in my carriage," she says, "on the road between Emon and Whitestone."

Vex's heart stops, because-- because if the dragon caught her scent in the fields outside Westruun and she is heading to Whitestone, which is the only possible destination for a carriage considering the current state of Emon, then she could be leading them directly to Percy's city, to his home. They've been lucky to have Whitestone escape the notice of the dragons for this long, she can't, she can't be the one who causes them to set their sights on it, she cannot, and she's heading _away_ from the Frostweald, so far away, how did she get that far that fast, she has to get back to the Sphinx's cave, she has to, her brother is-- Vax--

"I can't go to Whitestone," she gasps, realizing suddenly that her breathing has escalated to near hyperventilation, her chest heaving, the shock that near-death dealt to her system sending her fight-or-flight instincts into overdrive. "I cannot-- the dragons will--"

"Peace, my Lady," the woman says, looking a bit nervous but keeping her voice calm, though Vex sees her glance towards what is presumably the front of the carriage, where there is a little slat built into the wood for a passenger to slide back to speak to the driver with. "There have been no dragons in these parts for many years."

Vex stops entirely and stares at her, dumbfounded. She can only imagine how ridiculous, how incredulous she looks, though the woman meets her eyes with that same sense of steadiness that her voice carries, a mask sliding over her features that Vex is well familiar with, has seen Percy use on many occasions when he's unsettled and wishes to hide it. After a moment of this the stress catches up with her, hitting her hard and making her lightheaded, and she hisses softly and rests one hand on her stomach and the other over her eyes, gasping at the pain of it.

"My lady," that calm, serene voice says again, "you've been grievously injured."

"No shit," Vex snaps before she can help herself, and to her surprise the woman snorts indelicately before literally covering it up, a hand lifting to shield her mouth from view.

"You should try to relax before you hurt yourself further," the woman continues, though there's more genuine amusement in her voice than before, a bit of personality shining through that mask of bland neutrality, and after Vex blinks the tears from her eyes, the woman once more offers up what she can now see is a waterskin and Vex accepts it, taking it with a shaking hand and drinking from it herself.

The cool water is soothing to her throat but her unhappy innards rumble threateningly, not taking the liquid as easily as Vex would hope, and she holds her breath, counts to ten, struggles not to vomit up what she's ingested all over the inside of the carriage.

"I cannot go to Whitestone," she says finally, after the nausea has passed and that sharp pain in her gut has once more subsided to a low throb. "I need to get back to the Frostweald mountains."

"The Frostweald?" the woman asks, blinking in shock, before her serene expression returns, hiding her thoughts. "My lady, those mountains are many, many miles away, and I fear without proper healing you would not survive the journey."

This, Vex thinks to herself, is unfortunately likely true. The healing that the potions have bestowed upon her is minor, nearly negligible in comparison to the sheer amount of damage that's been done to her body in such a short time. The usefulness of magic is almost entirely dependent on the speed with which it is cast; as much time has passed between the infliction of her wounds to now would render all but the most powerful of healing spells mediocre in comparison to what could have been done to her immediately.

The best way for her to heal completely now, it seems, is time, though the aid of magic could surely only help expedite the process.

Vex thinks about what she wants to say, how she wants to say it, thinks about the way Percy words things so very carefully when he's trying to be diplomatic, then takes a deep breath and speaks. "If I go into Whitestone now, I may bring danger into the city. If the dragon that lives in Gatshadow caught my scent it may be hunting me, and I cannot--" She pauses for breath, closing her eyes and resting her head back against the bench that she's laying across awkwardly, the space too small to truly fit her but it's clear that an attempt was made to make her comfortable. "I cannot bring that calamity to the people there."

The woman clears her throat and Vex once again opens her eyes, forcing herself to focus. She's drifting again, her brain working too hard for her tired body to keep up with, and her vision is hazy for a few seconds before her eyes adjust once more. When the woman speaks, her voice is kind but firm, and she says, "I assure you, my lady, there _are no dragons_ in this area to threaten my city."

Vex stares at her.

The woman doesn't strike her as simple, or off in the head, or having any such affliction that would cause her to be as utterly _stupid_ as her statements suggest. "Emon is in ruins," Vex says, slowly, putting emphasis on each word, "from a dragon attack."

"I have just left Emon not but a few days ago," the woman says, mimicking her tone of voice almost exactly, "and it was decidedly not ruined."

Vex drops her head once more and closes her eyes. It doesn't make sense. Or maybe it does, maybe she's hallucinating, delirious; she has lost quite a bit of blood, after all, and has drank more healing potions in the last twenty-four hours than she probably should have. If it's a hallucination, though, it's a kind one. Her fevered mind could have conjured up any sort of scenario, she supposes a world without the Chroma Conclave attacking is sort of a best case one.

"My lady, I--"

"Vex," she interrupts, not moving. Her head is swimming and her body is aching and she can tell that she'll be drifting away once more soon enough. "My name is Vex'ahlia, of Vox Machina."

It doesn't get quite the reaction she was expecting. These days, especially among the citizens of Whitestone, the name Vox Machina is enough to provoke gasping and awed stares, hands reaching out reverently, and as uncomfortable as such things usually make the members of the group feel they've still grown to expect it. This woman seems entirely unaffected by the information, though when she speaks Vex can hear a smile in her voice.

"Ah, I suppose we've both rather forgotten our manners, haven't we?" Vex hums an affirmative and the woman laughs, quietly, prettily, like the tinkling of a bell; there are, certainly, worse things for Vex's subconscious to subject her to in the throes of a fever dream. "It is a pleasure, Lady Vex'ahlia, though the circumstances may be dire. I am Vesper."

The name tickles at the edge of her memory but her mind is such a clouded, tired thing now, awareness slipping away from her and grasping at it is like trying to grab ahold of water. There are-- there are worse places for her to be taken, she supposes. Vox Machina will no doubt return to Whitestone at some point, especially at the rate they've been sending refugees there. Percival will likely demand to make an appearance there soon, if only to check in, and when they show up Vex will be there to surprise them, _hello friends, bet you thought I died again didn't you?_

"Lady Vex'ahlia?" Vesper's voice sounds nervous again now, a bit of anxiousness leaking into her words. "Lady Vex'ahlia, I would not suggest falling back asleep. I know that it is difficult, but please, try to stay awake."

"He's going to be so quiet, so sad," she murmurs, clinging to that thought. Percy finding her in his city after thinking she was dead, _again_ , and they'd finally been making some sort of headway towards some sort of something, and he will be so sad, so sad.

"Who will be sad, Vex'ahlia?" Vesper asks, and hands touch her face, patting her cheek lightly, dropping down to press two fingers against her throat to check for a pulse, but Vex is fading fast, too tired to stay awake. She hears, muffled over the pounding in her head, the wooden slat slide open and Vesper speak to the driver of the carriage. "Trisha, darling, can't we go any faster? We're losing her."

That other voice from before, the one that she recognized but couldn't remember, speaks, distantly enough that Vex cannot understand the words, and again the name sparks at the periphery of her mind, something inside of her telling her that she _should_ know it but she doesn't right now, can hardly think long enough to answer Vesper's question.

"Percy," she sighs, or she thinks she does, but truthfully her tongue feels heavy and numb and when darkness takes her she welcomes it, too tired now to continuing chasing the light.

\------------------

This time waking is like trying to claw upwards through sand, a sensation that against all odds Vex is now fairly familiar with.

She's on a bed this time, or a cot at the very least, and this is the first thought that comes to her if only because her back and hips are thanking her for the softness of the mattress. It's not the most comfortable bed she's very laid in, a bit too lumpy in some places with straw poking through the sheets to prick at her back and sides, but it's a far cry from the wooden bench of the carriage and she's thankful for it.

She has a fever, she can tell; her muscles twitch and tremble without her consent, jumping beneath her skin, which is clammy and cool with sweat. Despite this, her stomach feels far better than it had previously, that intense ache caused by the alignment shift of her intestines having faded to a dull throb, much more easily ignored.

There are voices outside of the room that she's in, which is a small, sparsely-furnished thing that appears to be some sort of infirmary, and though she tries to focus on them her mind is still hazy enough that she catches only a few words, and those that she does hear mean very little to her. She spends the next five or ten minutes dozing in and out of consciousness, never truly falling back under the veil of sleep, but her body and mind both are so very tired, when the door opens and then closes, and she hears footsteps coming closer. Sliding her eyes open is a force of will that she is almost unable to muster, but when she manages to do so she blinks at who she sees.

Yennen leans over her, mumbling to himself, brows furrowed as his hands hover over her stomach, light spilling from the tips of his fingers. There’s something different about him, something that she can’t quite place, an irregularity about the shape of his face, the shade of his skin, but her mind is just slightly too hazy to grasp why it’s suspicious and so she lets it go to think about later. When she takes a deep, steady breath he glances up at her, and upon seeing her awake one of those furrowed brows lifts in surprise.

"You yet live," he states, and she gives a soft chuckle that ends in a cough, and the pressure it puts on her chest and stomach force her to take a few pained breaths before she can reply. He moves away from her briefly, back to the door, and calls out to the other side, "Get your mistress, ma'am, her charge has woken." A mumble, then the sound of footsteps, and Yennen comes back to her side, hands once again poised over her.

"Was there ever any doubt?"

"Quite a bit," the Keeper says mildly, finishing his casting; it restores some of her strength, but less than she was expecting, and much less than she'd like. "When the Lady de Rolo brought you to me I'd assumed you'd be dead within an hour."

"I'm stubborn like that," she murmurs, a smile tilting her lips. Now that she's here in Whitestone she feels safe, that earlier paranoia over the dragons chasing her having faded beneath the security granted by the city she'd helped save. "What's the prognosis, doc?"

Yennen levels a glare at her, unamused, though he gets up and washes his hands in a basin on the table beside her bed and then returns to her side, gently cutting through the stained bandages wrapped around her midsection to inspect her, clearly still willing to check her over despite the offense. “I’m the _Keeper_ here, and you will address me as such," he tells her sternly, prodding gently at her stomach. After a moment he continues speaking, his voice taking on that calm, informative tone that healers take so as not to startle their patients. "We had to perform surgery almost immediately upon your arrival, to put your insides in their proper places before you herniated."

"Lovely," she sighs, wincing when he presses down a bit too hard in one spot, and then with a grunt and ignoring his sharp noise of rebuke she leans up, weight on her elbows, and looks down at her stomach.

A long, neat incision bisects her abdomen, red and irritated but thankfully not appearing overly inflamed or infected in any way, and held together by a tight stitching of thread. It will scar, definitely, but better to be scarred than dead. Still, the sight of it marring her skin makes her throat grow hot and she lowers herself back to the table, blinking away tears. Yennen's expression, which had been supremely annoyed at her movement, softens, and he places two fingers upon her brow, murmuring in a language that she knows to be Celestial. When he finished his prayer he pulls away and then sets to collecting materials, salves and poultices from cabinets that line the walls.

"Healing magic can reduce the scarring, but unfortunately such things are inevitable with a wound of this magnitude, and myself and two other clerics expended most of our magical ability keeping you from bleeding out and unconscious during the surgery. You are lucky to be alive, my lady."

"You don't know the half of it," she mutters, raising one hand and press against her eyes. "How long have I been out?"

"Two days," Yennen says, going back to the business of cleaning the incision, focused entirely on his work, his voice and words distracted. "Though you've been in and out of consciousness for half of the last one. This is the first time you've been cognizant of it, though. Yesterday you just mumbled about dragons and bears."

"My dreams revolve around both those things often enough," she says, chuckling, then wincing once more when it puts pressure on her stitches. "Any news of my group? Have they returned?"

Yennen glances up at her in confusion, but she attributes that to the intensity of his focus on her wounds. Slowly, he says, "No one has come looking for you, my lady."

"Of course," she huffs. "That would be too easy. What of Cassandra, then? Has she attempted to send word?" Before he can answer she sighs and mumbles to herself, "Likely not, the road is treacherous enough as it is."

"Cassandra," Yennen starts, an inordinate amount of surprise in his voice, sounding more startled in that one name than Vex would have expected, but he's interrupted by the opening of the door, and the same woman from the carriage stands at the threshold.

The woman, what was her name? Esper? Esther? looks much finer than she had on the road, her messy bun traded in for an elegant updo with fine curling tendrils that frame the sides of her face artfully. Her clothing is rich, if less feminine than Vex would have expected; it almost appears as men's riding clothes, the sort that Lords wear on hunts that are designed more for utility over fashion, though hers is cut to form her figure, and her leather boots are clearly of quality but with scuffing and wear to the toes and heel. As if to balance this, her face has been treated to more cosmetics than she’d apparently decided to wear while traveling, her cheeks painted in a light dusting of rouge and her lips stained a dark, though not scandalous, red.

“Lady Vex’ahlia,” she greets warmly, surprising Vex, who doesn’t quite remember giving her name, though she knows it’s possible that she simply forgot while suffering her fever. Or she could have heard it while bringing her to Yennen, it must have caused a stir to the city to have one lone member of Vox Machina ferried in on death’s door. “I’m pleased to see you alive and well.”

“Well might be a bit of a stretch,” Vex says, huffing out a labored breath as she once again pushes herself up, arms trembling under her own weight. She’s loathe to speak to so cultured a woman while prone on a bed wearing nothing but some bandages and her breast bindings; she spent enough of her childhood feeling inferior that she’s not willing to consent to feeling so as an adult. Yennen makes more grumbly noises but helps her, gently hoisting her up higher and pulling her to the headboard so that she can sit up. Even still, having her torso vertical now causes more pain than she’d anticipated, and she ends up slouching slightly so the pressure is directed more to her tailbone.

Whatever, she’s just had surgery. No one can blame her.

“I would love to know how you came to be laying at the side of the road with such terrible injuries,” the woman says, stepping fully into the room. She glances at Yennen briefly, and though he sighs and doesn’t seem entirely happy to do it he fetches her a chair and sits it at Vex’s bedside. Again, Vex is surprised-- Yennen has high enough standing in Whitestone, especially as a council member now. She wouldn’t have expected him to go about grabbing chairs for anyone.

Maybe this woman is one of the newly appointed nobles? No, she carries herself with too much poise, too much assuredity. Most of the new nobles that she’s met in Whitestone were uplifted from near-poverty, merchants and farmers, heads of community that were pigeonholed into such positions through necessity during the Briarwood’s occupation, awkward and unsure of their station now that they have official standing in the city.

She remembers, once, before the Winter’s Crest festival, seeing Percy speaking to a handful of them from a distance, their faces nervous and fretful as they looked to him for direction, and his voice, too far to hear his words but the tone was soothing, his hands open and gesturing placatingly-- he’s a good man, Percy, sometimes.

This woman is too elegant, the straightness of her spine too natural and the set of her shoulders too high to have been learned recently and not bred into the bone. It’s… Vex was _sure_ that they’d been told all of the previous nobles of Whitestone were killed during the insurrection. A visiting dignitary, maybe? Though she’s not sure why a dignitary would visit, or where they’d come from, considering the current state of the world.

“I’d say it’s not too terribly interesting, but it’d be a lie,” Vex says with a sigh, wincing as she adjusts her position on the bed. Her abdomen is throbbing, not the agonizing pain that she’d felt while attempting to walk by herself, but enough that it distracts her, makes her close her eyes and grit her teeth briefly. “But first things first, I need to speak to Ca--” She stops herself, because even if she is familiar with Cassandra, propriety demands manners, and the way this woman holds herself, the way she looks stately and dignified even with her head tilted in confusion, it makes her feel young again in a way that she hates. There is no judgement in her eyes, only curiosity, but Vex can remember her father’s scrutiny, the rap of his wand against her knuckles whenever she spoke out of turn or otherwise shamed him.

“I need to speak with the Lady de Rolo before I launch into my story,” is how she finishes the sentence, and, unexpectedly, the woman smiles, adjusts her legs from their crossed position, dainty at the ankles but still not as proper as Vex would expect; it humanizes her, somewhat, detracts from the nobility of her finery.

“I’m sure that she will be more than willing to listen,” she says, but doesn’t make any movement to leave the room to call for Cassandra. Likewise, Yennen keeps looking between the two of them with a raised brow, barely concealed confusion on his face. Vex doesn’t understand why he’s just standing there-- Cassandra should have been notified of her waking immediately, especially given the state she was in.

For that matter, she realizes, glancing around what is clearly an infirmary, though she’s unsure whether it’s one in the Castle itself or one open to the public in the town, where is Gilmore? He should still be here somewhere, receiving treatment for his wounds. Where is Kima? They aren’t the closest of companions, but she’d thought the Paladin would be concerned enough for her to stay close by.

“Yennen,” she says slowly, dread starting to take hold of her heart. Surely if something had happened, if they’d gone missing or left, he would have informed her of it immediately. “Yennen, where are my friends?”

Yennen draws himself up, confusion turning to suspicion, and the woman --gods, what is her name? Vex knows that she’d said it, but she can’t _think_ \-- looks between the two of them, a tiny frown starting to pull at her lips.

“How do you know my name?” Yennen asks, and Vex’s jaw drops incredulously, and that dread tightens its grip.

“Where am I?” she says shakily, her breathing picking up once more, and she pulls herself up into more of a sitting position. “Yennen, what’s going on?” Then the woman rises from her seat and moves towards her, hands out and palms up, nonthreatening but Vex is threatened anyway, confusion and fear and so much has happened so quickly, so much betrayal, so much deceit, she cannot even remember how to honestly trust someone outside of her family, the group of people that she’s adopted as her own. “Who are you?”

“Lady Vex’ahlia,” the woman says, what is her _name_ , “please, calm yourself.” Her voice has taken on that gentle tone again, the one she’d used in the carriage, and Vex’s head jerks when she sees movement at the corner of her vision, turning wild eyes to watch Yennen slowly make his way towards the door. Her alarm bells are ringing, her instincts going haywire, a deer caught in the sight of a pack of wolves. She’s not sure if it’s irrational, not sure if she’s overreacting, not sure if this is true justified fear or if her body is working against her mind, pain and blood loss exacerbating honest anxiety. “You are safe here, I promise.”

Yennen raps his knuckles against the door, and it opens within seconds, a familiar figure stepping in. The woman-- from the festival-- the one who defeated Grog in the arm wrestling competition-- gods what was her name, what was her _name_ \-- steps into the room, a dressed in the traditional armor of a Whitestone guard, one hand resting half-threateningly on the sword at her side. Trisha, Vex thinks suddenly, Trish the Dish. She looks-- oh gods, she looks younger, not as many lines on her face, no gray in her hair, less worn than Vex remembers, and that’s, _that’s_ what was different about Yennen, he’s not as haggard, as tired, more fit, a youthfulness to him despite his age, a heart unburdened by strife-- oh shit, oh _fuck_ , the Sphinx had roared, hadn’t it? As she’d fallen? She’d felt time shift, felt the world shake and shiver as she’d faded into the darkness.

“Who are you?” she demands of the woman now, fingers itching for her bow, feet itching for the door, the woods, if she can get past them then she can make it there she knows she can, she can restitch her wounds herself if they pop and she knows plants that she can use to numb the pain, reduce infection, she has to get back to Westruun, to the Frostweald, to that _godsdamned Sphinx_ , and the woman’s name, it wasn’t Esther, oh _gods_ \--

Trish steps forwards, face pulling into a frown, but the woman looks over her shoulder, raising a hand to stop her, and says, “It’s-- it’s okay, Trisha, it’s alright.” She looks back at Vex, nervous but composed, keeping her face calm and her chin high. “I am Vesper Johanna von Musel--”

She gets no further because Vex leaps from the bed, animal fear and adrenaline pushing her forwards, and Yennen shouts in surprise as the woman-- Vesper, Vesper, _Percy’s sister_ , that _godsdamned fucking Sphinx_ \-- inhales sharply, tensing in shock, but Vex is focused on the door, on getting out, getting away, but when she goes to dodge around Trish the woman just plants her feet, makes a fist, and socks her square in the stomach.

The pain is so sudden, so blinding, so all-encompassing that when Vex loses consciousness the blackness that takes her is nearly a comfort.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i started picking up shifts at my part time job again in addition to my full time job, so i'm basically down to one day off a week \o/ i _am_ writing, i promise, just not as much as i'd like. i basically am able to do chunks when i've got the time and energy.
> 
> also, coming up with personalities for all the de rolo siblings is fun :B

Vex'ahlia will not find this out until later, but she actually does die a second time, then. Trisha will, sheepish in a gruff sort of way, describe it to her as 'only a little bit, and only briefly', and admittedly it does take only medical resuscitation and not divine resurrection to bring her back, though nobody involved would call the process particularly easy.

When she wakes, it isn't for much longer than a handful of seconds; she wakes on the operating table, Yennen's glowing palms on her chest pouring magic into her body, his eyes tightly shut and sweat beading on his brow, as a nameless man's hands move inside her open stomach, and she has perhaps a moment of calm that confusion lends her before the pain and sight of it register and she draws in a breath to scream. Yennen's eyes flicker open, a brightness in his pupils, like looking directly into a lantern, two searing pools of sunlight, and she reels away from it with a shriek, hands flailing feverishly on pure instinct, seeking to rake her nails out against flesh as Trinket might his claws, the organs inside her shifting like the contents of a barrel, before a rag is pressed against her nose and mouth, her sinuses clogging with the smell of ether. Her body stills before her mind, granting her another few moments of terror, terror, _terror_ , oh gods _please_ , before finally that stumbles and stops as well until only her trembling heart beart remains.

And then she wakes again, afterwards, to the smell of hartshorn, and she twists her head away and to the side, dry-heaving on her pillow. A man stands over her, not the same one that had been playing in her guts, not Yennen. "My brother," she pleads, her voice rasping, her skin shivering with fever. "Brother."

The man leaves her sight. Comes back with water. Pours it gently, painstakingly down her throat; waits patiently when she vomits it back up. Her stomach is hot and tight, the skin stinging above aching guts, shivering with agony when she weeps brokenly, hurt within and without, her brother, where is _Vax?_ The man settles at her bedside, places a hand on her forehead, murmurs in Celestial, and she wants to pull away but she doesn't have the strength and so she just cries, great hiccuping sobs, begging brokenly for a family that's beyond her reach. He doesn't say anything after his prayer ends and eventually she stops speaking as well.

She fades in and out of consciousness for long enough that time escapes her, and when finally she regains it, she blinks her eyes open into an empty room, and decides to take the opportunity to contemplate her situation.

She is in the past. That is-- that is the only possible explanation that she can imagine, as strange and fucked up as it may be. There's certainly enough evidence to suggest it, unless the Briarwoods actually _didn't_ kill Vesper de Rolo and she's just been hiding in a broom closet in a basement this entire time. How far-- how far into the past she doesn't know. At least four years, she thinks; Percy has never been entirely clear on how old he was when the massacre of his family occurred, though he can't have been any older than twenty, and without-- oh, _gods_ , without actually _meeting_ him she can't determine the amount of time that's passed from then to now.

Vesper was... Vesper was his older sister, yes? And he was the third of seven, and the oldest was male, so she can't have been (be? have been? what verb tense do you use for this? Vex's teachers in Syngorn never covered this sort of thing) any more than a year or two older than him. The woman who saved her, the noble Lady with her noble Lady's clothes and baring, assuming she was actually who she claimed to be, didn't look a day over twenty. Oh, fuck, does that mean Percival's a bloody _teenager?_

She's not sure if she can handle Percy's balls dropping on top of everything else that's going on.

She has to-- she has to get back to the Sphinx. That's all there is for it. She'll go back and speak to him as politely as she knows how, _yes hello I'd be more than happy to earn your name if you send me back to my time pretty please_ , throw a wink or two or ten in there for good measure, and hope he's feeling generous enough to let her go without mauling her a second time.

Speaking of which. Vex pulls herself upright, each inch after agonizing inch stretching her abused stomach, and lifts a hand to pull away the sheets.

Her abdomin is wrapped with strips of linen, the middle section of which is tinged pink and yellow with blood and pus, respectively. It hurts, oh _gods_ does it hurt, but the skin of her torso and hips don't seem to have red creeping across them so she probably doesn't have an infection, which is good because if she did the whole ordeal of begging the Sphinx would be null and void since the infection would kill her before the blasted cat even thought to.

She's curious, but not enough to actually cut open the bandages. Not when she's not entirely sure if this isn't what's actually holding her together.

"Oh, hells," she says to herself quietly, dropping back down against her pillow, though thankfully from the smell of it she doesn't think it's the one she vomited on. "Oh, hells and fucks and all the damns in the world."

Westruun is... it's too far away, too far away for her to make the journey alone in this condition. Stubborn pride and spite will only get her so far if her bowels are threatening to fall out every time she squats to have a piss. The fact that she's not yet dead is an encouraging one, because it means that for whatever reason the healers of Whitestone have a vested interest in keeping her alive, which means they'll likely continue to do so until she's healed up enough that she _can_ leave on her own, though the gods only know how long that'll take.

Maybe, she thinks to herself, in a quiet corner of her mind, it'll take long enough for the Briarwoods to make their move.

And then, as soon as she thinks this, her heart stops and sinks, chest tightening painfully until she has to remember to breathe, head spinning from lack of air and the dread that fills her abruptly. The Briarwoods. Whitestone hasn't yet fallen, which means that it will at some point, and _soon_ if she's not completely wrong about the birth order of Percy's siblings and the estimate of Vesper's age. Within-- oh, fucking gods, within a _year_ , maybe two, _maybe_ , if they're bloody _lucky_. Her breathing comes back, harder, sharper, quick jerking inhales as her heartrate picks up.

They'd barely bested the Briarwoods before, and there'd been _seven_ of them, with a fucking _cleric_ , and even with all of Vox Machina fighting against them she'd nearly been killed herself. She can still remember it, that blast of magic that had caught her heart like a vice grip and squeezed until it was too damaged to beat, the fear of it, the pain, being carried from the room with the orb of godsdamned death in it because nothing would fucking _work_.

(Oh, fuck, is that down there still? What was there before the Briarwoods and what did they bring with them? They came here for a reason, what dark secrets does Whitestone hide even now?)

She's a half-elf with a bow and a bear. That's kind of her thing. And now, she doesn't even have a bear. Hell, she thinks, glancing about the room, a new paranoia guiding her eyes, she probably doesn't even have a bow anymore.

What can she do against vampires and liches and mercenaries and fucking demon swords?

She rests her head back against her pillow, staring up at the ceiling and blinking tears out of her eyes.

Nothing. She can do _nothing._

...and yet.

She blinks again, harder, a stray thought catching at her and pulling her jaw taut.

And yet. And yet, she could do so much, couldn't she? She could put a bug in the ear of the Lord de Rolo, Percy's father. She could watch for signs. She could, fuck, she could alert the entire goddamned Council, Allura, _Uriel_ , tell them to keep on their toes.

She could. Oh, gods above.

She could tell them about the Conclave.

Her breathing escalates again, picking up speed for an entirely different reason, mind whizzing in six hundred different directions. She can nip this all in the bud. Stop the Briarwoods before they even leave Wildmount. Tell Allura to alert the Fire Ashari to the weakness in the barrier. She can do-- oh, oh gods, she can do _so much._

She could end everything before it even starts.

...she could end everything before it even starts.

If-- if the Briarwoods never come, then Percy will never flee Whitestone. He'll never end up in that prison cell, and they will never meet him. If the Fire Ashari learn of the possibility of Thordak's escape, that could-- that could change the schedule for an AraMente. Keyleth might never leave her tribe. That's nearly a fourth of Vox Machina, gone. Not-- not gone, really, but _gone_. Not the same. And who's to say that changing things won't affect Vex herself?

If she's at least four years in the past, then Vex'ahlia and her brother are still wandering the wilds near Westruun. He has perhaps just indentured himself to the Clasp. Which means that, if his recent reveal is true, she's still being hunted by someone there. If the group that later becomes Vox Machina isn't there to meet them in Stillben, distract them away from Westruun and the Clasp, who knows how that would affect them?

She can do so much. She can end everything before it even starts.

Tears well up in her eyes again. Oh, gods. What a terrible, terrible thought.

\------------------

By the time she gets a visitor, Vex has wept herself into a headache, and she doesn't move her hand from where it's pressed against the bridge of her nose even as her ears twitch towards the direction of the opening door.

A pause, then pattering footsteps in the opposite direction. After a moment, Vex lifts her hand curiously; the door has been left open.

By the time she's manuveured herself up into the closest approximate to a sitting position as she can manage, a head has poked itself back through the doorway.

Sunlight flashes against the reflective glass of spectacles and her heart skips a few beats, oh gods, she's not ready, not for him, not for _him_ , but when the voice speaks, "Oh, hello!" the accent is familiar but not-- not his. Not his.

Her vision widens, focusing on more than just the spectacles. A teenage boy hovers just inside the doorway, hands wrapped around the knob nervously, and though his face is just as angular as she'd expect and his nose carries that distinctive de Rolo hook (and honestly, she should have known it was Vesper right away, only someone related to Percy could look that bloody bird-like), the blonde hair and warm, easy smile is something that she couldn't imagine Percy having, not even before the Briarwoods. Percy wears angst too easily, like a great dour coat, for it to have not been tailored to him at a young age.

Besides, Percy should be somewhere around eighteen, nineteen, if her math is right, and this boy looks barely fifteen, his hands too big for his arms and feet too big for his legs, long and spidery as they may be. And beyond that, it's not just his accent that's familiar, but his voice; this was the one who came to her with water and a prayer and so patiently cleaned up her bile while she cried out for Vax.

He shuffles from foot to foot, blinking wide blue eyes at her, and the two of them watch each other for a long moment, her heart pounding at the thought that she's going to meet Percy's _family_ , before the boy asks, "May I, ah, come in, ma'am?"

Ma'am. _Ma'am._

Raven Queen's feathery tits.

"If you absolutely feel you must," Vex says, laying back with a groan, and there's another moment of silence. When she finally pries her eyes open to look at him again he's still standing in the doorway, hands now clasped in front of him, biting his lip. "Well?"

"Oh," he says, voice cracking slightly the way teenage boy's voices tend to do (nevermind, she'd _love_ to meet Percival as a teenager, it would be _hilarious_ ), "right." And then he bustles in, and now that he's fully in the room and walking towards her she can take him in entirely, surprised by what she sees. He's related to Percy, no doubt about that, so much de Rolo in the face that even her pained and exhausted mind can see it, but he wears the simple pants and shirt of a doctor, sleeves rolled up to his elbows; even at the meanest that she's seen him, she doesn't think Percy would be caught dead in something with so little... ostentation. "Are you thirsty?" he asks, and though he's clearly intimidated the words are still kind, still good-natured, and she's not sure which sibling this is but she's got a gut feeling that she likes him already.

"A bit," she answers, and he immediately retrieves a pitcher of water and pours some into the cup at her bedside, handing it to her and reaching out to help tip it into her mouth, pulling away obligingly when she waves away the assistance and drinks from it herself.

"The Keeper will be here soon," he tells her, his smile just slightly crooked to the left. "He's with another patient, a boy had his foot run over by a cart, but he told me to ask if you needed any help." And then he seems to catch himself, straightening under her scrutiny and drawing up to his full height. "I'm sorry, where are my manners? I am Ludwig Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo II."

She opens her mouth to reply and, to her immense astonishment and surprise, instead begins to cry. It's just-- that name, that _name_ , it sounds so-- so wrong on anyone else but Percy, in any voice but his, on any other tongue. And the thought that she might never hear it again, not from hers, not from _her_ Percy, might never hear him introduce himself diplomatically and be immediately undermined by the rest of them saying _But you can just call him Percy_ , might never hear that proud and lofty name from that proud and lofty man-- it aches. It aches, it aches, it aches.

"Oh, dear," Ludwig says nervously, reaching out as if to pat her shoulder and then thinking better of it and pulling his hand back. "There, there."

"Sorry," she gasps after nearly a minute of inconsolable sobbing, wrestling herself under control through sheer stubborness. Gods above and below but she's already grown tired of crying. "It's been a rough week. I'm Vex."

"I know," Ludwig says, that crooked smile peeking at the corners of his lips again. "Vesper told me I wasn't allowed to let you die. I work here in the clinic with Keeper Yennen sometimes, you see, and she told me I was in charge of your care when he's not here."

"That was kind of her, and you," Vex says with a sigh, adjusting her seating to take pressure off of her hips, and when she glances back up at the boy the look of intensity and concentration on his face as he stares at her takes her aback. "What?"

He blinks a couple times, then fidgets with his hands nervously and turns away. "Ah, nothing, nothing, sorry. It's just-- you're younger than I was expecting. Considering."

"Considering what?" she asks curiously, and a little bit offended honestly, but before he can answer the door opens again, startling them both, and Yennen steps through, wiping at his hands with a damp cloth and glaring at the two of them. He looks tired, drained in a way that he hadn't when she'd seen him before, and, oddly enough, he's got three red scratches peeking out of the collar of his priest's raiments.

"I was wondering if you'd wake up," Yennen grunts at her, stepping forward with little hesitance, but despite his rough demeanor his hands are gentle when they press down on her shoulders to push her back into a laying position. "You had to undergo surgery again."

"Ah yes," she huffs, wincing as his fingers prod at the bandaging around her stomach before he finally takes a pair of scissors from one of his pockets and cuts through them. It's familiar enough that she manages to push the current predicament from her mind; Yennen has healed her wounds before, after all, and the wounds of her companions as well. His bedside treatment could use a bit of work, but it seems like it comes by him honestly. "I vaguely remember something like that, someone pawing around in my gut-stuffs."

"Part of your lower intestine burst from the blunt force trauma," he says, sharply, silencing her sarcasm with little ado. Oddly, Ludwig, who'd struck her as a very anxious boy, surprisingly does not shy away from the skin that's been revealed, standing at Yennen's shoulder and watching him poke at the incision with a critical eye. It's a far cry from Percy, who towards the beginning of his time in Vox Machina used to get flustered about the fact that Keyleth walked around barefoot. "We had to remove a portion of it to prevent sepsis. Four clerics and a Paladin, a _Paladin_ , have worked constantly for the last _week_ to keep you from death's door."

Vex gapes at him for a moment, the incredulous stare broken only by her flinch when he starts to smear some sort of ointment on the incision that bisects her stomach. Finally, she sputters, "Well, it's not like I bloody well asked to get punched, did I?"

"Holy hell," Ludwig says, sounding half-delighted, "she actually punched you? I thought she was just having a go." Like Vex was, he's quickly silenced by a look from Yennen, holding his hands up sheepishly and looking contrite. As soon as Yennen turns away, though, that crooked grin is back.

"No," Yennen says finally, giving her the stink eye even as he applies the ointment with a painstaking gentleness that belies his concern. "I suppose you didn't. Though you're old enough to know better than to go hopping out of bed right after surgery. I don't even want to know what fool fever dream spurred that episode on."

Fever dream. Of course. They had to come up with some explanation to her behavior, and that one certainly does fit the bill. Not quite true, but at least now she's got an excuse, she supposes.

"And why _did_ four clerics and Paladin work so hard to keep me alive, if you don't mind me asking?" she says to the ceiling, breathing out hard when Yennen places a hand on her sternum, palm glowing bright enough that she can see it at the corners of her eyes without searching for it; a wave of healing magic flows into her, and though some of the pain is lifting she feels no immediate shift of her innards, no itch that heralds the divine sewing of her skin back together. She gets the impression that most magic that's been poured into her has been primarily to keep the pain at bay. "Not that I'm ungrateful. Just curious."

"The Lady de Rolo has paid for the service out of her own coffers," Yennen says after the glow finally subsides. "She's taken a special interest in you, it seems."

Inexplicably, Ludwig snorts and steps to the side for the first time since her stomach was bared, covering his mouth against a smirk. Yennen pays no attention to him, instead turning away to retrieve some fresh bandages, which he then wraps around her stomach once more, thanking her distractedly when she uses her forearms to lift her middle off of the bed for him. "Regardless, medicine and the will of the gods have kept you alive for this long, and I imagine now that the worst is behind you your own will can do the rest." Finally, he glances fully at Ludwig, who snaps to attention, the last shadow of mirth still tugging at the sides of his lips. "You should fetch your sister, boy."

"Yes, sir," Ludwig says, and again, Vex is shocked by the complacency of it. Percy was... _is_ so opposed to being belittled or looked down upon, to being told what to do, that she'd always assumed it an honest trait of nobility, an arrogance bred into the bone. Vesper and Ludwig both have surprised her, though she supposes that she hasn't had much opportunity to form an opinion since she's apparently been riddled with fever for the last week.

Maybe Percy is just genuinely sort of a prick.

Ludwig leaves the room, stopping briefly at the door to bow his head at her, and once the door is shut behind him Yennen lets out a long, heavy sigh and walks to the other side of her bed to the chair that flanks it and drops down into it. A minute or so passes in silence as Yennen harbors his thoughts, and Vex harbors hers.

There is a weakness to her, a tremble in her muscles, an ache in her stomach and chest; she knows that she's not strong enough to leave on her own, not yet. The trek would kill her before she could even reach the outskirts of the mountains that surround Whitestone. And besides, some part of her, some dark little place in her heart, still wonders if she should even return to her own time.

Would it not be better to stop all of this madness before it can behind? It would be kinder to Percy, certainly, and to the thousands of people across Tal'Dorei who lost their lives to the Conclave. It would... it would ruin her, she thinks, to leave behind her family. Her brother. To change what happens so significantly that the world as she knows it is altered forever. It would ruin her, but it would be kind.

Sheer determination keeps the tears from welling up once more, and she grits her teeth, jaw tightening against the stinging of her eyes.

She is so tired of crying.

"You knew my name, before."

The words startle her, make her jolt, which in turn pulls at her stitches and makes her hiss in pain. Yennen doesn't move from his seat, doesn't even glance up at her, and when he speaks again it's directed down at his hands, folded in his lap. "When you woke up the first time, before you even spoke to the Lady. You knew my name, yet we'd never met."

Vex blinks at him a few times before dread clutches once more at her heart and her mind works frantically to think of an answer. When finally one appears from the ether she clutches at it desperately, though to her credit her voice is steady and betrays none of her trepidation. "I remember the Lady speaking to someone in the carriage, on the way here. I remember that she mentioned taking me to the Keeper, and can only assume that she said your name at some point."

He hums in reply but says nothing for a long period of silence, but she knows that he's not finished yet and she waits for the other shoe to drop. "I have prayed for guidance," he says finally, "though I'm not sure why. There is an... unease about you. A displacement." He head lifts now, and he's not so old as she remembers, as the Yennen of her time, but his eyes are still tired, and still very, very sharp. "A wrongness."

"And what did your god say?" she asks, curious. She knows little of the gods, of religion, beyond her experience with Pike, though divine intervention is certainly something to consider.

"She has been worryingly silent," he says, and then once more falls still himself.

\------------------

Vesper doesn't arrive for another hour, an hour spent partially in tense silence before Vex decides that she doesn't have the energy to spare for maintaining her composure and instead starts counting the cracks in the ceiling aloud in Elvish and, when Yennen eventually loses his own composure and snaps at her to stop, continues the game quietly to herself in Undercommon. When she does come, it is announced by a rap of knuckles against the door, which then opens before Vex even has an opportunity to call the visitors in.

Vesper strides into the room, her face that same serene mask that Vex remembers it being. Again, her clothing is more masculine than she'd expect; a pair of breeches, the worn riding boots she'd had on last time, and a blouse that would be flowing and dainty if it weren't restrained by a charcoal-gray vest. She's followed by Ludwig, who still has his good-natured smile that Vex can't help but return, and, surprisingly, Trish, who takes up a spot against the wall beside the door, arms crossed and looking anywhere but where Vex lays on the bed.

If she's not mistaken, there's a blush on the guard's face that tinges the tips of her ears red.

"Do you need me for anything else, Keeper?" Ludwig asks, graciously drawing his sister a chair and pulling it close to Vex's bed, and standing at attention as he awaits an answer.

"No, my young Lord, you've done well today," Yennen says, heaving himself up out of his own chair with a sigh even as Vesper sits in hers and crosses her legs at the ankles, her eyes on Vex with an air of curiosity. He crosses the room to Ludwig and sets a hand on his shoulder, steering him towards the door. The boy glances over his shoulder at Vex briefly but doesn't struggle, and when they pass Vesper, Yennen nods at her and says, "My Lady." Then, attention back on Ludwig, they exit.

As Trish closes the door behind them, Vex hears, muffled, "Good, because Percy..."

Vex swallows and shuts her eyes hard.

Oh. Oh, gods.

How selfish are you, Vex'ahlia? she thinks to herself. How selfish, indeed?

"I'm pleased to see you've recovered from your second surgery in as many days," Vesper says quietly, and Vex opens her eyes and turns to look. Vesper smiles when she sees Vex's attention is on her and she pats down a few wrinkles from her pants. "I apologize for the, ah, harsh treatment."

From her spot against the wall, Trisha shifts, arms tightening across her chest and her chin lifting, though she says nothing and doesn't meet Vex's eyes.

"It's fine," Vex says after a moment, her own curiosity getting the better of her. A special interest, Yennen had called it. Why? "I don't begrudge a fighter for acting on instinct."

"I could ask for no better guard," Vesper says, her voice still lacking enough in inflection that Vex can't tell if she's being sarcastic or genuine. Trisha shifts again, that blush spreading down to her cheeks as her jaw tightens; apparently she's not sure whether she's just been insulted or not, either. Then, surprisingly, Vesper smiles, cuts her eyes down to the side demurely, and says in a more gentle voice, "You look well. Better than before."

Vex blinks at her, then shrugs cautiously. "I've been pumped full of healing magic for the past week, that probably has something to do with it."

"Indeed," Vesper says, her smile widening as she continues looking at the ground instead of Vex herself. When her gaze finally lifts she clears her throat delicately, and says, "Well then, Lady Vex'ahlia, might we have a full and proper introduction this time, or will you bolt from the room again like a startled doe?" The smile softens the words but the curiosity is still there, and Vex shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny.

"I'm sorry for that, by the way. I _was_ startled. By all means," she says, gesturing with one hand.

"Startled by dragons, if I recall," Vesper says with the faintest hint of a giggle in her voice. Behind her, against the wall, Trisha rolls her eyes up to the ceiling and closes them as if asking for patience. Then Vesper draws herself up to her full height, shoulders back and chin high, looking as regal as a queen despite her casual attire. "I am Vesper Johanna von Musel Klossowki de Rolo II, Lady of Whitestone. Not _the_ Lady, of course, that would be my mother." This is apparently a very important distinction to her, Vex determines, based on the amount of emphasis she delivers the statement with.

There's a long moment of silence before Vex realizes that Vesper is waiting for her to introduce herself, or reintroduce herself, as the case may be. She clears her own throat, much less delicately.

(She'd had a conversation with Scanlan, once. Well, obviously she's had multiple conversations with Scanlan, they've been traveling together for years after all, but one conversation in particular has stuck with her, has burrowed down in the back of her mind and resurfaced itself whenever the need has arisen; a conversation about lying.

"You see," he'd told her, fingers working to tune a lute, which was apparently his instrument-of-the-month at the time, "lying is easy, if you know how to do it. You either lie outrageously enough that there's literally no other option the person can think of besides it being true, because why else would you say something so ridiculous? The problem with that method is that you have to lie well, and convincingly, to the point where _you_ have to believe it."

Vex had placed one finger below her nose and above her upper lip in mimicry of a mustache, and Scanlan had laughed brightly at the sight.

"Yes," he'd continued with a fond sort of smile, clearly thinking of his time as Burt Reynolds, whoever the fuck that was. "Exactly. The other method, and this one has its own set of pros and cons, is to put a little bit of the truth in with your lie. It makes it believable, realistic, and you don't have to work as hard to convince them because it's already half-true, so you already believe it. Or put enough of the truth in there to make it so your lie isn't actually a lie at all, but just a truth with some stuff left out so if they confront you about it later you can say with honesty that you didn't actually lie at all."

Then he'd strummed the lute, grinning to himself when the notes rang pure and true, and then began talking again as he'd played, attention already shifting away from the conversation. "Just be careful if you do that one, though, Vex. Putting even a little bit of truth in is still truth, and then they know something about you, and knowledge has power.")

"I'm Lady Vex'ahlia," she says, with as little hesitation as she can, "of Syngorn."

Vesper smiles at her, uncrossing her ankles and then crossing them back again on the opposite side, head tilted just slightly to the side in a picture of polite inquiry. "You were quite far from home then, where I found you along the Silvercut. And quite injured besides. A woman of your maturity should not have to journey alone. Have you no family to escort you on your travels? A husband, perhaps?" A short pause, short enough for emphasis but not long enough for Vex to answer, and then, "A wife?"

"No," Vex says slowly, blinking at the odd question. Against the wall, Trisha is still staring up at the ceiling, and Vex's sharp ears pick up the sound of her inhaling deeply, holding it in, and then exhaling hard through the nose. "I have a brother, but no other family, and no spouse. At least, no other family to travel with." She takes a deep breath herself to give herself a moment's more to think, placing one hand on her stomach. If they think the pause is due to pain, well, that would make sense, wouldn't it?

She thinks about what Scanlan told her. Enough of the truth that the lie isn't a lie at all.

"My father is an ambassador of Syngorn. I had business in Westruun but recently received a summons to join him in-- in Vasselheim. I was making my way back east to charter a skyship when I was attacked by," she stops, takes another deep breath that they can blame on her injury, mind racing to come up with something dangerous enough to put her in this state. "Owlbears," she blurts finally, and then winces because she has no clue if owlbears are actually native to the wilderness surrounding Westruun. Still, they're deadly enough. "I escaped with injuries, and there you found me."

Vesper seems to take her at absolute truth; her serene mask drops during the story, eyes widening at the appropriate parts and covering her mouth at the mention of owlbears. Trisha looks a little less convinced, though not to the point of overt suspicion. Her crossed armed tighten a bit and her frown grows slightly deeper, but she doesn't seem inclined to interrupt or argue.

"And lucky I did," Vesper says, smoothing down a wrinkle in her pants. "I shudder to think the state you'd be in if I hadn't. You were feverish enough to think you were being chased by _dragons_."

Vex forces herself to laugh, forces herself to ignore the pang of anxiety and despair that the very word invokes in her heart. There are no dragons here, she tells herself. No dragons here. "When you're as injured as I was, every beast seems as dangerous as a dragon, I suppose."

Finally, Trish speaks up for the first time since she'd entered the room with her Lady. Her words are still directed towards the ceiling, but her voice is calm, as steady as Vex remembers it from that day at the Winter's Crest festival, though less warm, less thankful. "Can you verify this story?" she asks, eyes tracing the cracks across the ceiling much as Vex had earlier. "I mean no offense, but there have been brigands on the roads."

"Trisha," Vesper says sharply in admonishment, even as Vex racks her brain for an answer, an excuse.

A vague letter to her father could work, she supposes. They are estranged enough that if she worded it flippantly, downplayed her injuries, pretended to be her younger self, he'd either completely ignore the letter or send back something with appropriate polite coldness that let her know how little he cared without outright stating it. And even then, sending and receiving a letter from Syngorn could take weeks, or maybe she could just send it to Vasselheim with no intended recipient and say the reply got lost in transit. Or, by the time they'd expect a reply, she could already be long gone.

"I suppose I have no proof on me," she says slowly, "but I should send word to Father in Vasselheim. A response letter could ease your suspicions?"

"Her suspicions are never eased," Vesper assures her with a sigh, though for the first time there's a sort of fondness in her voice, her eyes softer as she speaks the words even though Trisha cannot see them.

Vex thinks about her, Trisha, that day. There was a seriousness to her, a hardness, even through the festivities, and she'd thanked them all so sincerely, with such heart, that even then Vex had thought that she'd must have lost something personal to the Briarwood's attack.

Vesper, she realizes, slowly and all at once, in the way that realizations come when you've already had them and just not quite noticed. She lost Vesper. Vesper, who even as she talks down on her, does so with a sweetness in her eyes, had called her darling in the carriage with such familiarity.

How selfish, Vex'ahlia? she thinks. Selfish enough for coin and treasure, yes, but selfish enough for this?

Vesper continues talking, oblivious to the dark turn of Vex's thoughts. "Well, the daughter of an ambassador is just as well as an ambassador in my eyes, and ambassadors should not stay in city clinics with the common folk." She stands abruptly, nods her head and smooths down her clothing once more, smiling down at Vex as if she's reached an important decision. "When you're well enough to move about you shall join us in the Castle, as a proper ambassador would, and we'll await your letter and recovery there in comfort."

Trisha looks at them sharply, her scrutiny of the ceiling ending, and as if anticipating this Vesper turns and looks over her shoulder, eyebrows raised daringly. There's a long stare-off between them that Vex doesn't want to interrupt; if nothing else, being in the Castle will make her more privy to when the Briarwoods inevitably visit, if she's still here when that happens. What she will do then... well, she'll figure that out as she goes.

"Your father will be displeased," Trisha says finally, and Vesper snorts, surprising Vex with the indelicacy of it.

"My father is on his own diplomatic mission. Besides, I've already asked Mother, and she's told me yes, and her word trumps his." Vesper draws herself up self-importantly and laces her fingers together in front of her. “We’ve more than enough room, and this poor lovely woman has had more than enough strife.”

Fuck’s sake, she doesn’t even know the half of it.

“I’d be delighted,” Vex says, for her part, and Trisha transfers that glare to her now. She raises her hands up defensively, and Vesper claps her own enthusiastically.

“Excellent! I’ll make the necessary arrangements to have you moved up the hill to the Castle. I shall speak to Yennen about your care and what supplies we need to make you as comfortable as possible." She turns away with purpose and one last smile at Vex, a sort of giddy excitedness to her that the half-Elf has trouble completely understanding the cause of, and gestures for Trisha to follow her as she leaves the room.

Trisha watches her Lady's retreating back for a moment before turning her head back to look at Vex, laying prone on the bed. Her eyes narrow, and Vex shrugs, trying to look as innocent as possible. It wasn't her idea, after all. She's just along for the ride at this point.

After a short stare-down, Trish leaves as well with an audible huff, and Vex allows herself to relax back onto the mattress, taking stock of the recent development.

Staying in Whitestone Castle means she'll be closer to information about when the Briarwoods arrive. However, it also means she'll be closer to Percy. Maybe she can... just avoid him. All context clues that she's gleaned from him over the years point to him being a rather antisocial, mousy child, anyway. Perhaps he'll just stay in the library or his workshop the entire time and she'll never have to deal with that painful awkwardness.

Right. Like luck and fate have ever been kind enough to her for that.

\------------------

It's another two days before Yennen determines her able to be moved without the risk of her innards schlopping out of her. Two dangerously dull days where she realizes just how incredibly _sick_ of laying down she is, her body itching to get up and just fucking _do_ something with no energy to actually follow through with it, her back and hips aching from doing nothing but laying in a bed for-- gods, nearly two weeks now.

Nearly two weeks she's been separated from her family, and she wasn't even cognizant for half of it. Are they-- are they out there, somewhere, sometime, worried about her? Did they just stop existing the moment that she was flung backwards, or are they running parallel to her? She never truly understood how the Planes work, her brother can demure all he likes but he was definitely the more academic of the two of them during their time in Syngorn, and so she's not sure if she was transported to another world entirely, or if she's just... causing the world to rewrite itself as she goes.

Thinking about this gives her both a headache and a heartache, and so she consciously chooses to _not_ think about it. Instead, she contemplates her choices and what actions she wants to take, and by the time Yennen finally packs her up in bundles of furs and gently walks her out of the city clinic and into a waiting carriage to ferry her up the hill to the Castle she's determined that she's going to try to curry favor with the Sphinx to send her back to her normal time.

What's done is done, and she's scared of the consequences that changing anything will bring. Stopping the Briarwoods could have unseen effects; if they find another city to take over and do their dastardly experiments on, that city may not have as capable protectors as Vox Machina. It hurts her, guilts her tremendously to the point where she actively struggles not to think about Percy and what he'd been through, but she's come to the conclusion that meddling as little as possible is the wisest course of action.

The carriage that takes her up to the Castle jostles her about, and she winces as she and Vesper, who'd come with it to fetch her, make polite conversation. Vesper tells her the history of Whitestone and the de Rolos that she already mostly knows, having heard it from Percy, but she oohs and ahhs appropriately like the information is new. The only things that are actually interesting are the descriptions and details of the de Rolo children, a topic that Percy has always shied away from for the pain of it.

Julius, she's told, is the oldest, with a wife and child of his own, though as expected he still lives in the Castle and is set to take up the mantle of Lord. Vesper describes herself as "a lady-of-leisure", which Vex determines that since the heir already has an heir himself means she can do whatever the fuck she pleases so long as it doesn't reflect poorly on the family. Percival, the one she's been dreading and looking forward to the most in equal measure, is apparently an engineer of some sorts, which makes sense, and probably won't be around that much because he stays holed up in his workshop most of the time, which also makes sense. Whitney and Oliver are the twins, and they are trouble, and please ignore them. Ludwig, who she's already met, is technically a woodcutters apprentice, but only when their father is paying attention to him, which is apparently rarely, and when left to his own devices the boy instead follows Yennen about like a puppy, eager to learn the ways of medicine. Cassandra, Vesper finishes, is the youngest, and is quick and clever for her age, but she's very sweet, Vesper is sure to inform her, just don't trust her when she's with the twins because they all just exacerbate each other.

Vesper talks little about her father, and what she does say is short and clipped. He is stern and strict but not cruel, very no-nonsense, and he has little patience for when things don't go his way. "Or people who don't do as they're expected," she says, quietly, looking out the window of the carriage up towards the Castle, a sad sort of wistfulness in her eyes. Trisha, Vex has noticed but not commented on, is conspicuously absent.

Her mother is spoken of in warmer tones, though the description of her is vague, is pleasant. She's kind, and can be trusted to calm her husband, and is the more sensible of the two.

If Vex had been asked to describe her own mother, she'd have explained the softness of her hands, the natural upturn of her lips into a smile, the bright blue of her eyes that both the twins always quietly wished they'd inherited. She'd have talked about her laughter and her gentle voice, the way she hummed as she folded linens, the lullabies she sang at night when one of her children had had a nightmare. She'd have thought, but maybe not said, the way Elaina had called her _darling_ , in sweetness when she was pleased and in exasperation when she was disappointed, the way she'd taught the twins how to do different braids in their hair and how she'd once woven flowers into Vax's, laughing with her daughter the entire time as her son had pouted and griped but he'd worn them until the braid had loosened and they'd fallen out. She'd have looked at Trinket and explained that her mother had defended them from bullies of all ages, child and adult alike, growling and puffing up like a bear protecting her cubs when Byroden's butcher called them mutts, the two of them hiding behind her and clinging to her skirts while she roared at the world in their defense.

The distance with which Vesper speaks of her own mother after the colorful descriptions of her siblings surprises her. She gets the impression that, perhaps, the de Rolo children aren't very close to either of their parents after all.

Beyond that, the ride is uneventful. People occasionally stop and stare at the carriage as it passes, but it seems to be a common enough thing that it doesn't cause a disturbance. Vex, who's grown used to people gawking at her, used to them reaching out to brush the clothes of any of Vox Machina as they pass, used to the reverent whispers and quiet thank you's, is put off by how bloody... _normal_ it feels.

When they arrive at the Castle and Vesper gives her a tour, Vex has to pretend like she doesn't know where the guest rooms are, though she doesn't have to fake the awe that the grandeur that Whitestone in its heyday provokes.

It's cleaner, and brighter, with servants that don't look like they've spent the last half-decade in the iron grip of a vampire lord, and paintings that line halls that were empty and in disrepair when she'd last walked through them. The staff smiles, especially when they see Vesper, as they pass, and are eager to follow her instructions when she sends them off to Vex's assigned guest room with the poultices and salves that Yennen gave them. And in fact, in the hustle and bustle of it, in the moving and struggling to ignore the rising pain in her side and stomach and the soreness in her body after having lain in bed for a fortnight, in the shock of seeing the Castle during its prime, she very nearly forgets where, and when, she is.

Until Vesper leads her into the library, a grand room filled to the brim with books where Vex remembers a solemn emptiness from where the Briarwoods razed it, and sees two people hovering outside the door, just to the side of it. A tall man stands above a young girl, the height of them just enough of a difference to make the sight comical as they peer into the library itself, watching the spectacle within.

And a spectacle it must be; even outside the door Vex can hear the shouting of a raised voice, indignant and irritable and utterly familiar in its cadence and tone.

Someone has severely pissed Percival off.

Vex stops a few feet away as realization washes over her. Oh, gods. Oh, fucking gods. She's actually going to meet Percy. Younger Percy, a Percy untainted by loss, by the Briarwoods, by Orthax; Percy without a gun or a mask; Percy without a reason to constantly look over his shoulder and jump at the shadows that follow him; Percy without fear.

"Oh dear," Vesper sighs, walking ahead of Vex towards the two people outside the door, and upon hearing her both of them turn to look as she approaches. The man looks to be perhaps in his mid-twenties, maybe around Percy's age in her own time, perhaps a year or two younger then Vex herself, with a pencil-thin mustache that looks-- well, it looks rather silly, if she's being honest. Still, he's got the sharp de Rolo nose and the sharp de Rolo eyes, and he smirks when he sees Vesper. What was the oldest's name again? Ah, yes. Julius.

The girl Vex doesn't recognize at all, until very suddenly she _does_. A preteen, twelve maybe, maybe thirteen if she's a bit of a late bloomer, with honey-blonde hair and wide eyes that belie a cleverness beyond her years; she registers that Vesper is there and then immediately looks to Vex, curiosity enough in her eyes that she appears almost suspicious. She moves backwards into her older brother, though because he is behind her and she is closer to them Vex cannot tell if she does so for protection or to protect.

Cassandra. Oh, gods, Cassandra, and she's so young, Vex knew but didn't realize how young, she grew up with the Briarwoods, was raised by them, was perhaps only a year older than she is now, puppy fat still thick on her face and her chest still flat with childhood. Vex knows her only as a woman, worn-down and gray-streaked despite being still in her teenage years, knows her only as a victim and a traitor and a broken little sister begging for redemption.

Vex thinks for a moment that perhaps she might cry, but no. No tears come. She has dried herself of them.

"What happened this time?" Vesper asks as she reaches them, and peeks around the open door herself. From the other room, Vex hears Percy's voice rise in volume, " _\--and another thing!_ " and Vesper sighs again.

"Percival's workshop was set on fire," Julius says, his smirk widening. "Someone threw a match in one of his barrels of sulfur."

"Only a little bit of fire," Cassandra pipes up, eyes still on Vex, who's forcing herself to breathe out of pure determination. "Mostly it just smells like arse."

"Language," Julius chides, though he does so with a smile. "A Lady shouldn't talk so crudely."

"I'll kindly remind you that you aren't a Lady," Vesper tells him, eyebrow raised, "and so you have little room to decide how we should and should not talk." Another male voice shouts from inside the library, one that Vex doesn't recognize, though this man yells with just as much vitriol as Percy, and Vesper sighs a third time, heavier than before. "Oliver sounds pleased as punch. The twins did it then?"

There's a long pause before Cassandra's gaze finally leaves Vex and settles instead on her sister, and then she shrugs, a casual lift and drop of her shoulder, eyes wide and innocent.

"You devil," Julius says upon seeing this, his voice delighted. "You didn't say!"

"You're right," Cassandra says primly, "and I still haven't. Is this her, sister?"

Vesper starts, then turns back to look at Vex in surprise, as if she's forgotten that she has company. "Gracious, I'm so sorry! Yes, yes, please, come forward, Lady Vex, and meet my siblings." Vex shuffles forward, swallowing and trying to tune out Percy's shouting from the other side of the door. Baby steps, Vex'ahlia, she tells herself. Baby steps. "Lady Vex, this is my older brother Julius, and my youngest sister Cassandra. Julius, Cassandra, this is Lady Vex'ahlia of Syngorn. She is an ambassador, and is my guest here until she heals from wounds sustained on the road."

"A pleasure," Julius says, smiling, and reaches out to take her hand. When she lifts her own he takes it and presses a kiss to the backs of her knuckles, eyes never leaving hers, and he grins good-naturedly when Vesper huffs in annoyance.

"You're married, brother, if you've forgotten," she says sharply, to which Julius replies with a laugh, "As if Sina would let me."

Vex finds herself giggling without her consent, and stifles it immediately. No, she-- she cannot like them. She cannot grow attached, she cannot become familiar. She must stay distance. You're dead, she thinks to Julius. You're dead and I cannot save you. (But couldn't she?)

Cassandra curtsies, some of the suspicion leaving her expression but retaining all of the curiosity, and Vex opens her mouth to say it's good to meet them when the door is abruptly flung open the entire way and a boy storms out, perhaps a year or so older than Ludwig and honey-blonde like Cassandra with a severe expression on his face, and he doesn't even look at them as he stomps past. Julius and Vesper both watch him leave, a hint of worry on their faces, before a girl that looks nearly identical to him comes into the hall as well, her slightly shorter legs working to catch up.

"Oliv-- Oliver, hold on!" She pauses briefly to wave at her siblings and give Vex a curious look before she hurries after the boy. "Hello, sorry! Oliver!"

"Git," a sharp, familiar voice says from the doorway, and Vex closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and steels herself before turning to look.

He's got brown hair.

That's the first thing she thinks when she sees him: he's got brown hair. Not as dark as hers and her brothers, not the brown that borders on black, but a good brown, a proper brown, like chocolate, or freshly-tilled earth. It's startling, similar to how she'd been startled to see a young man with entirely white hair when she'd first met him and yet somehow a foil to that because of the difference. Brown hair to match his dark eyebrows, she thinks, and struggles to take in a breath around the tightness in her chest.

His eyes are much the same, but less worn, less tired, and less sharp for the constant vigilance against the world and himself alike that he's adopted as an adult. And yet, he is an adult now, isn't he? Eighteen, nineteen perhaps, younger than she's ever imagined him but grown in the eyes of society. He's just so-- so young. So godsdamned young. So fucking _young_.

 _Percy_ , she thinks, brokenly, her mind weeping where she forces her body to refrain.

Those eyes, bright blue behind his spectacles, glance at her for the briefest of moments before sliding right by with no recognition, disregarding her immediately.

Vex'ahlia feels like she's just been punched in the gut again.

"Percival," Vesper says warningly, though she sounds more exasperated than anything. "You know how he gets, you can't be too hard on him."

"He'll be moping about for days now," Julius agrees, sounding absolutely unconcerned.

"Yeah, Percy," Cassandra says innocently, eye wide and guileless. "I'm sure he didn't mean for it to smell _that_ bad."

Percy opens his mouth to reply, then stops and looks at Vex once more. His gaze isn't as piercing as she's used to, and it surprises her. Her Percy is an intense man, but this one isn't jaded enough to carry his anger.

He's... lesser, somehow.

"You're younger than I'd expected," he says in confusion, then winces. Vex blinks. That's the second time she's heard that from one of the de Rolos. What the hells were they expecting? "Apologies. You must be Vex'ahlia."

"Indeed, brother," Vesper says, a strange strain in her voice that Vex notes but doesn't pay much attention to, overwhelmed as she is by how _young_ Percy looks. "Lady Vex, I believe that this is the last sibling of mine for you to meet, if we could call what happened a moment ago an introduction to the twins. This is--"

"Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III," he says, and Vex looses a shuddering breath. Oh gods. This was a mistake. She cannot do this.

"That's a mouthful," she says, hoping her voice doesn't come out as numb as she feels. "Can I call you Percy?"

His eyebrows furrow and he frowns at her, that indignant look so familiar that it makes her heart ache, and that ache intensifies when he says, "Absolutely not."

How many times can her heart sink before it just eventually falls out of her? If nothing else, this waiting to heal business will let her know how much agony it can take within it before it breaks.

"She didn't mean offense, brother," Vesper says, glancing at her out of the corner of her eye curiously. "You must admit, to others our names must sound very strange."

Percy-- _Percival_ snorts and crosses his arms, attention leaving her entirely as he looks instead of his sister. "Father comes back from his trip next week. I hope by then she'll have learned better manners, or you'll have to come up with a decent excuse for your increasingly peculiar tastes."

Vesper flushes and Vex's jaw drops. Did he just-- he _did_.

Holy fuck, he just genuinely is a huge prick.

"Younger brother," Julius says sharply, his good-natured smile gone, and Percy-- _Percival's_ jaw tightens before he strides down the hall as well.

"He's just grumpy because of his workshop," Cassandra says, a bit of guilt creeping into her voice. "I'll calm him down. It was a nice to meet you, Lady Vex."

She then rushes after her brother, grabbing ahold of his hand when she catches up to him. As Vex watches, Percival looks like he's about to shake off the hold before stopping himself, and she sees the tense line of his shoulders soften a bit as he glances down at his sister and allows her to twine their fingers together.

"He's not normally like this," Vesper says, embarrassment still thick in her voice, and Julius frowns even harder.

"Yes he is, he's always moodier than a boar in rut." He then turns to Vex, expression contrite, and says, "I apologize on his behalf. There's a reason we mostly just leave him to his own business. I'll talk to the staff, have a nice dinner prepared, and we can all meet in better spirits tonight and get a proper introduction. It'll give the boys some time to cool off." He then turns and claps one hand onto Vesper's shoulder and looks her in the eye, a tiny smile tilting his lips as he rubs a thumb against it comfortingly. Vex looks away.

Do not like them.

Do not get attached to them.

They are dead.

You cannot save them.

"Don't worry about Father," he says to her quietly, quietly enough that Vex knows she's not supposed to hear but for the way that humans always underestimate the hearing of half-Elves. "I'll handle him if need be."

"Thank you," Vesper whispers back, and from the corner of her eye Vex sees the eldest de Rolo sibling lean forward and kiss her on the forehead.

Vex closes her eyes.

How selfish indeed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asshole percy is my favorite kind of percy tbh


End file.
